I’ve been obsessed with my characters’ body language. They smile, frown, chew their lips, blush, roll their eyes, glance, look from the corner of their eyes, purse their lips, curl their lips up in a smile, wrinkle their nose, eyes crinkle in a smile, flash smiles, chuckle, sigh, sigh in frustration, sigh with desire, sigh in exasperation, shout, mutter, mumble, rest their elbows on their thighs, on the table; hold their head in the hands in despair, stare…oh you get the picture, don’t you?

It’s all cliché, cliché, cliché! And that has been on the Internet Writing Workshop’s Writing List’s sujet du semaine. A lot of back and forth about expressions that have turned into clichés like “wag the dog” or “mountain out of a molehill” or “the shit hitting the fan.” My favorite one is “going to hell in a hand basket ” because it just hits the nail on its head. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Back to body language…I’ve given myself the assignment to go through Julius and look at all the beats, tags, and cues that mention some form of physical movement, and choose language that is more dramatic and that better conveys the character’s mood, tone, and the scene’s setting. No easy task, but it has to be done.

To facilitate this project, I was fortunate to have stumbled upon Margie Lawson’s website and blog, thanks to fellow IWWer and friend, Carol Kean, and saw that Margie had an online class, “Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist.” Unfortunately, no information of how to sign up or the cost. However, you can purchase and download the two week lecture and try your hand with the exercises she provides.

Although I downloaded this last night and skimmed the first lecture, I see that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Margie provides a sample and then breaks it down in an analysis of the setting, the mood, the character’s personality. Here’s an example she provided in a guest blog post on Routines for Writers:

Writers need to consider the EMOTIONAL SET of their characters, the SETTING, and the SITUATION.  Those three dynamics impact the SPEED, TONE, QUALITY, VOLUME, and PITCH of dialogue.

Let’s check out how authors capture Dialogue Cues on the page.

Here are some DIALOGUE CUES from HARLAN COBEN’s 2009 release, LONG LOST.  For this section – I selected dialogue cues that all speak to TONE.

1.  I expected Jack to give an “awww, Mom,” but maybe he heard something in her tone too.

2.  I had thought about the strange tone in his voice, near panic.

3.  “Must be divine,” Win said in a voice richly marinated in sarcasm.

“Oh, it’s nothing special,”  Paintball said, not picking up on Win’s tone.

4.  I was about to crack wise—something like “tell all your friends” or “sigh, another satisfied customer”—but something in her tone made me pull up.  Something in her tone overwhelmed me and made me ache. I squeezed her hand and stayed silent and then I watched her walk away.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Note the Stimulus and Response pattern above.

5.  I made eye contact with the man I’d fought with in Paris. I kept my tone even, controlled.

 

Moving onto:

Looks and Gazes and Glances and Facial Expressions

C.J. Box, THREE WEEKS TO SAY GOOD-BYE

1.  Garrett looked at me blankly. Something in his eyes disturbed me.  It was as if he saw me as someone who couldn’t possibly understand him, and I was not worth an explanation.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Fresh and amplified interpretation of a look.

2.  Then he smiled outright, and something danced behind his eyes.  I felt a chill roll down my back.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Stimulus/Response

3.  And I caught the “See?  What did I tell you?” look Garrett gave Luis after she was gone.

4.  He locked eyes with me, and I felt a chill that made the hair on my arms rise.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Stimulus/Response

5. On the sidewalk, he paused, and I caught up with him.  I’d never seen him so furious.  The skin of his face was pulled back, slitting his eyes and making his mouth a snarl.

Brad Meltzer, THE BOOK OF LIES

1.  On my left my father stares at Ellis, then Timothy, then back at Ellis.

Then he looks at me.

I see desperation every day. For the homeless, it overrides despair, depression, even    fear.  But when my dad’s wide eyes beg for help . . . I’ve seen that look before—all those years ago when the cops came and they arrested him.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Using an amplified internalization about a look – to slip in backstory.  Powerful.

2.  To be honest, I thought my dad was bullshitting when he said he didn’t know what was in the truck, but from the confusion on his face, this is news to him.

3.  Most people turn away when you ask them a hard question. Serena continues to look straight at me, and her yellow blue eyes . . . I hate to say it . . . there’s a real depth to her stare.

4.  She looks at me in silence for what seems like a full minute.

5.  “And stop giving me that my-boy’s-become-a-man-look!”

Now to critical readers and writers the samples Lawson provides might raise a skeptical eyebrow, but it certainly is better than my rolled eyes, countless sighs, staring into space and whatnot. I am anticipating that this will be a challenge and hard work, but I am prepared to put in the time and make Julius even stronger.

Two days ago I posted a photo of my workspace on my Facebook page, and one of my writer friends commented she downloaded the photo to see my reference books.

The lightbulb over my head started to glow, and gave me the idea to write about some of my favorite reference books.

Almost a year ago, I wrote Julius: A Bibliography that listed many of the books I used for research. But what about the tools of the trade like dictionaries, thesauri, and other sources?

First let me say the dictionary I own, Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, is terrible. And what’s a crying shame is that I got rid of my two good dictionaries because they were so big, heavy, and the print was too small. However, thanks to the Kindle, I am very pleased to write that it comes with two dictionaries. One of them is the Oxford Dictionary of English. It’s easy to use, the print I can adjust thank’s to a feature the Kindle has to enlarge print, and it doesn’t take up any space or weigh fifty pounds.

Other dictionaries I’ve acquired include:

• The Word Lover’s Dictionary: Unusual, obscure and preposterous words. For example, need another word to say, “He snapped his fingers.” Try “lirp.” A “teen” could also be a “hafling”, but you knew that, right? And if you’re not too pleased about still being a virgin you can “depucelate” or dislodge one’s virginity.
• Dictionary of Word Origins: The histories of more than 8,000 English Language Words (compliments of Skyhorse Publishing Inc.)
• Flip Dictionary: For when you what you want to say but can’t think of the word. I am in love with this dictionary, and although I haven’t used it often (I recently bought it), I know in the very near future it will be getting quite a bit of use. One of the features of the Flip Dictionary that I love is that it has grouping of certain terms. For example, I’m not very musical, but if I needed to describe vocal music and could only come up with opera or a ballad, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for I can select the following: anthem, aria, canon, cantata, chanson, chant, chorale, hymn, madrigal, round, or serenade (I actually knew most of these, but I rarely use them). But there are also Jewish terms, Japanese terms, digestive or gastroenterological diseases, castle terms, psychiatric disorders, and much more.

Style guides include:

• Associated Press
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition (probably time to get a newer version).

Among the thesauri in my collection, I have:

• Roget A to Z: The definitive thesaurus of synonyms in dictionary form
• The Synonym Finder by J. I. Rodale, which I’ve used very often and found it to be much better than Mr. Roget’s (plus we’re dealing with one million words as opposed to Roget’s wimpy 300,000).

As far as books on craft. I own most of the Writers Digest books, but for me the two books that I think are top notch and highly recommend are:

• The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, by Priscilla Long. What’s so special about this book? Priscilla has managed to write in one single volume the best advice from her own writing experience, examples from top writers (she likes more literary types) and the best exercises to learn craft. In 326 pages, her advice is more detailed than the all the Writers Digest books.
• Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques no Fiction Writer can Afford to Ignore, by Elizabeth Lyon. Like Long’s book, Lyon offers the best techniques to edit. I used to heavily rely on Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renne Brown and Dave King, but Lyon’s book is far superior.

At a later date, on Alvah’s Books, I will have full reviews of these two books, but I urge anyone who wants to improve their craft and their self-editing skills to purchase these two books.

I have many more books and foreign language dictionaries (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic) but the books listed above are the ones I use the most often. As for the Internet and my bookmarks, well that’s for another post.

I’ve been thinking a lot about of where I write. I’ve been asked to keep it in one area of the house, because I tend to spread out like crawling ivy. I work in my study cum workout space cum bedroom. It’s not bad; it’s a sunny spot, and everything I need is all within reach. If I want a break, I walk over to the kitchen and get whatever I want.

Sometimes, though, I like a change of scenery. When I lived in the city, I could pack up the laptop or moleskin and just walk over to one of my favorite cafes and write. Not so on this tiny island. The one place that would qualify as a cafe isn’t very inspiring, and our little library is too, well, noisy.

But wherever I choose to write, at home or elsewhere, the point is to get the words down on paper or screen. And this brings me to a post that marketing guru and blogger Chris Brogan wrote for today, The Myth of the Work Environment. For the most part, I agree with him, but Brogan also comments about getting published and writes the following:

The best sentences don’t sell books (or magazines or whatever). A string of reasonably not bad sentences with useful and engaging information sells books. My books are NOT the best-written books out there on their topic. They’re well-marketed books that I put some soul and heart into. Is every sentence just so? Not even a little bit. But am I a New York Times bestselling author? Oh yes I am. Because I published.

That’s the only difference between where a lot of writers are and where I am: I published.

How? I write. I write all the time. I’m writing this at Walt Disney World, when I should be riding on the Tower of Terror or something. Yes, I do take time to stop and smell the roses, but I don’t neglect my duties. It’s part of what I do. Write. Get writing. Stop making excuses, and don’t look back.

Your successful writing future awaits. Just get publishing.

I take umbrage with this section. Getting published via the traditional manner is not as easy as Brogan makes it out to be, especially in fiction. There’s no question that if we’re serious writers we should write everyday and stop making excuses. The more time we spend writing, honing our craft, and creating a compelling story, the closer we might be to getting

I’ll spare you the soapbox rant about composing exquisite sentences that zing and sizzle versus churning out mediocre, hum-drum ones. But I think Brogan missed the mark here because it comes across that he’s not taking into account on the different types of writers, their styles, and the time it takes to write a book. Perfect sentences might not guarantee a best-seller, but I rather write nuanced and evocative sentences that will resonate with a minuscule group of discerning readers rather than settle for “reasonably not bad sentences” and hope for a best-seller.

I’ve been sick for the past ten days with a cold that won’t go away. Most of what I’ve been doing has been on automatic pilot. My writing and revising has been on hold mostly because of the brain fog. So I’m spending far too much time on Facebook reading updates or writing silly ones about the dogs. Otherwise, my time has been spent on activities where there’s not much creativity or going to bed early to read.

During the day I continue to follow the discussions on the writing list at the Internet Writing Workshop, and there’s been an ongoing thread about books on craft. Some people have mentioned Robert McKee’s Story, which is primarily for anyone interested in learning how to develop a screenplay, but many people have noted that it’s also good for fiction. McKee’s book has brought both praise and scorn. On the pro side, some, like me, have remarked that he does provide good advice on craft; others are skeptical in part because they think McKee is formulaic. I can’t say off-hand, because I haven’t delved much into his book (it’s a meaty tome).

There are a number of very good books that help with crafting, I own a fair share of them, but so far the two that have struck a chord with me has been Elizabeth Lyon’s Manuscript Makeover and Priscilla Long’s The Writer’s Portable Mentor. Both authors tackle wordsmithing, creating a distinct voice, developing an ear for the sound and flow of words, and much more.

But the old and best advice you can follow is to read, and read a lot. As I previously wrote I’ve been on this reading marathon, combing through all the reviews of books that come to my inbox, which led me to the wonderful Olen Steinhauer. Although, Steinhauer’s genre is espionage, I’ve learned so much about plotting and character development, but also voice and narrative. But as I look back at the most recent revisions I made, I realize that I still have a very long way to go if I am using Steinhauer as a benchmark for good writing and storytelling.

So where does this all lead me? More reading, more writing and more revisions. It’s exhausting and frustrating work, but I have to take it word by word, sentence by sentence. In other words, I have to follow my own common-sense advice: look at my story as a giant puzzle and make sure that each piece tightly interlock together.

Between now and Monday night, my goal is write another 12,000 words for The Wilde Solution. That will put me at the halfway point of the story. If I keep up this pace, I will have my 50,000 words within a week.

Now if I had to critique my own work, I have to say  I’ve established that Hal and Cyprian have a relationship based on sex (although my sex scenes are implied and not graphic at all), and Hal has  seen a couple of red flags, but he doesn’t really know they’re red. He considers these Cyprian’s personality quirks.

I introduced a new character, Tom Powers, he is Hal’s best friend and the founder of a think tank. This character has great potential, and I’m fooling around with the idea that he’s also a member of a very long-term and successful sleeper cell. I don’t know yet. We’ll see how it all plays out in the second part of the story when I switch to Cyprian’s point of view.

According to Scrivener, I’m at 40+ pages of the story, and I see have to pick up the pace. It’s very chatty, and I’m telling rather than showing. That leads me to think that I probably should slow down and not race for those 50K words in such a short time period and spend more time crafting quality narrative.

Next steps include, apart from getting another 3,000 words down, is to really focus on description and not get so bogged down in conversation. Secondly, I have to add more scenes of Cyprian and Hal at school. Third, some more quirks on Cyprian’s part that foreshadows the upcoming events.

I think that’s enough for today. Now I have to get to work.

I’m trying to figure out how to create more conflict in Julius. Where things stand at the moment everything is going well for my Merry Marxists.  So I’m fooling around with the idea of having one of the minor characters, Craig, play a bigger role in the story.

Craig is Corinne’s old high school boyfriend. He is mildly obsessed with her. For him, she is the one that got away. The problem I’m having with this role expansion is how can he stir up some trouble for Corinne and Jake. It took me a couple of days to figure how Craig could create some conflict, and after knocking around a few ideas I decided to have him be the dissenting voice.

For those who’ve been following my trials and tribulations with Julius, you all know that it has a Marxist bent, but I felt the story would be so much better if I ruffled a few feathers within the narrative. So that meant back to the research. Since Corinne is obsessed with early and mid-20th century events that involved the CPUSA, the Spanish Civil War, the Rosenbergs, HUAC and the Hollywood Ten, I thought that it would be best to have Craig equally involved in mid-century conservatism. So after some digging around I came across Russell Kirk’s Canons (which I’ll list momentarily).

Kirk was known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. From Wikipedia:

His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was also considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.

Kirk developed six “canons” of conservatism they are:

1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the “variety and mystery” of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize “natural” distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are “unimaginable apart from one another” and that “all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief.”

Apart from what I found online this is as much as I know about Kirk and I went ahead and ordered from Amazon The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. I suspect this will be scary reading. But research is research, and if it helps tighten the story then so be it.

Nonetheless, I think that Craig advocating Kirk’s canons will make him into a fleshier character. And the conflict? Well, just as Julius launches, a snarky little blog will also see the light of day and will be Julius’ major enemy, causing problems for the Merry Marxists.

I write a lot of back story, and some critters–the naysayers–inform me that agents and editors don’t like back story. If that’s the case, why is it that I come across novels that have a lot of flashbacks? (and let’s not mention prologues and epilogues).

The back story to Julius has its purpose. First, it delves into the narrator’s psyche. You can’t understand her actions, beliefs, doubts, dreams without the story behind the story. Secondly, as I’ve written before, I believe that you need to know history before you fully understand what’s happening in the present. And a lot of Julius is based on history.

I tend to intersperse flashbacks within the primary action and what I’ve discovered is that sometimes it works and other times it can get clunky. The question then is to ditch it or not? I discussed this before with Ritz (my accountability partner) and she likes the back story, but she suggested that maybe I can make some of these past events into separate chapters. I thought about this for a whole five seconds and loved the idea. The reason I’m so enchanted by it is that my prologues are back story, and they’re strong. So why not include these memories as separate chapters?  The last chapter I revised I included a line that foreshadows an upcoming scene, but it also introduces something that happened in Corinne’s past.

It’s time now to write a back story chapter and see how it all works out!

Got your attention, right? I recently participated in a playful email exchange with a friend and he commented that as a writer I knew how to hit the right spots.

Oh, I wish that were true. Writing sex scenes is not my forte. The one scene I wrote for the first novel was way over the top. Almost porn. I managed to tone it down, but I was still embarrassed by it.

I realized early this week I need to add a little spice to my character’s sex lives. Writing a sex scene will be a challenge because in a way it feels a little voyeuristic and at the same time a little too personal to share the sexual exploits of your characters.

Although sex doesn’t have a huge role in Julius, the two main characters are attractive, healthy, relatively young, they’re in a relationship so it would make a sense to throw in a love scene or two that isn’t gratuitous, but fleshes them out as people.

Makes sense right? But how do you pull it off  successfully without it becoming too titillating or cliche? Jodi Cleghorn wrote in Write Anything:

An evocative sex scene is tough to create and it can go from bad to worse very quickly. Writers fall into the use of uninteresting and overused cliques or inappropriate and mismatched names for body parts that verge either on the ridiculous or the offensive. 

Well, I certainly don’t want to venture in either of those territories. In another post in Write Anything, Annie Evett offers this tip:

Tantalize, provoke, and tease your reader utilizing short sentences, break the flow of your prose not only with the words you use, but with its structure. Just in the way your characters may be short breathed in a specific moment, reflect this with your writing. Be suggestive rather than descriptive through the use of metaphors, simile, and imagery founded on your characters psyche.

Hmm, I think my two characters are going to have some fun (and me writing it).

And on the note, time to make Julius a little sexy!